It hasn’t been the greatest week for NFL Network analyst Charley Casserly. Last Tuesday, Casserly used anonymous team sources to bash Kyler Murray and took heat for that, and he then claimed Wednesday that “Clearly, [Murray] was not trained for the interview” (false) while talking up his experience being paid to train other competing prospects. On Monday, Casserly went all in on criticisms again, this time of Arizona Cardinals’ quarterback Josh Rosen, but he then made an even more egregious error, one in the vein of Stephen A. Smith’s Hunter Henry/Derrick Johnson comments.
While talking about Dallas Cowboys’ receiver Cole Beasley, Casserly said the Cowboys need to throw to him more, adding “Dez Bryant, they threw the ball to him too much last year.”
“I’ll go with what we said earlier: why don’t you throw the guy the ball more? I tell you what, Dez Bryant, they threw the ball to him too much last year! Get Beasley more involved, I don’t know why they can’t do that.” Yeah, the only problem with that is that the Cowboys cut Bryant last April, and he didn’t wind up playing a NFL game all season. He signed a one-year deal with the New Orleans Saints in November, but tore his Achilles tendon in practice two days later and missed the rest of the year. So no, the Cowboys did not throw the ball to him too much.
Look, mistakes happen on live TV, but this is still a bad look. Even arguing that the Cowboys didn’t throw to Beasley enough is a bit silly, as he was second on the team with 672 receiving yards on 65 receptions (behind only Amari Cooper, who posted 725 yards on 53 receptions in just nine games with Dallas). And Beasley was the second-most targeted player on the Cowboys with 87 targets, behind only running back Ezekiel Elliott’s 95. There’s maybe an argument that some of the targets for Michael Gallup (68), Blake Jarwin (36), or Allen Hurns (35) could have been shifted to Beasley, but none of those guys is Dez Bryant.
It’s even unclear who Casserly was mixing up with Bryant. If it was Cooper, that’s a dumb argument in its own right, as Cooper’s catch rate with Dallas (69.7 percent) was almost as good as Beasley’s (74.7 percent), and his 13.7 yards per reception topped Beasley’s 10.3. Also, it’s not like cutting Bryant was a low-profile move that got overlooked; it was a huge story when it happened. Maybe Casserly’s mixing up his years, but that’s not a great bit of analysis there. And we can add it to the pile of silly comments from him this week.
[Clippit]
